


Spoilt Music With No Perfect Word

by angevin2



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Excessive Referentiality, General Unpleasantness, Multi, Necrophilia, Opium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-03
Updated: 2011-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:00:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/pseuds/angevin2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard's attempts to cope with loss via a program of Swinburne, morphine, and rough sex do not really work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spoilt Music With No Perfect Word

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Leaves of Willow and of Adder's Tongue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/56861) by [angevin2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/pseuds/angevin2). 



> Part of the [Sweet Fortune's Minions](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sweetfortunesminions) AU. All of the poetry in this one is from Swinburne's [The Leper](http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/swinburne/view?docId=pb1leper00&query=&brand=swinburne). Thanks to [**speakmefair**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair) for general support and brain-sharing.

Edward leaves Richard's house when the sky is just beginning to fade from black to grey and the clouds are spitting forth occasional fitful bursts of snow.

There is a faint yet piercing chill in the room; Richard, sliding from his bed, pulls a green dressing-gown about himself, savoring the lingering ache in his shoulders and back and thighs, the memory of Edward's mouth tracing the red welts across his chest as he brings Richard off with gentle hands, and of the arch of Edward's back, the tension in his thighs as Richard runs his lips along the length of his prick.

Richard sits before the mirror, letting his dressing-gown fall open, examining the way the darkening reds and blues and purples stand out against pale skin. He cannot remember the last time he slept well; his face looks terribly peaked, his eyes deeply shadowed and his mouth bruised where Edward had hit him. He feels strangely beautiful. He wonders if Edward feels like Swinburne's scribe, embracing the corpse of his beloved:

 _Love bites and stings me through, to see  
Her keen face made of sunken bones.  
Half worn-off eyelids madden me,  
That were shot through with purple once._

His own eyelids seem shot through with purple, his own hair half grey, half ruined gold -- but that, at least, is a trick of the light, or of his own fancy. He knows he has always had beautiful hair.

( _that knight's gold hair she chose to love --_ )

Richard pulls his dressing-gown closed, shivering suddenly at the memory of last night mingled with the memory of the last time he knew such pleasure.

 _Six months, and now my sweet is dead  
A trouble takes me..._

It had been at Shene House. She had died the next evening, in the selfsame bed.

 _...I know not  
If all were done well, all well said,  
No word or tender deed forgot._

That night he had sent everyone away, had held her in his arms and kissed her cold lips and prayed he might join her in that unending silence.

He does not remember who came the next morning to rouse him, only the difficulty with which he had withdrawn his fingers from hers.

In his dreams -- and sometimes, through a haze of absinthe -- he can see her face, not as she looked then, but as she must look now, and in these dreams, regardless, she twines withered fingers through his hair as he pulls her into his arms.

Richard wakes from these dreams, inevitably, achingly hard, and with a desire to tear off his own skin.

The light trickles grey through the drawn curtains. Richard opens the drawer of his dressing-table and with icy fingers fumbles for the needle.


End file.
